


Stuck

by Theoroark



Series: Nobody's Fault [10]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Background Spiderbyte, Dysfunctional Relationships, Fights, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mentioned Suicidal Ideation, bottle episode, mild body horror, prior relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-01 09:45:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15140423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theoroark/pseuds/Theoroark
Summary: Ana and Jack find a way to trap Gabriel, to force him to talk.The problem is, they're trapped with him.





	1. Chapter 1

Ana imagines Torbjörn would be fairly annoyed by her and Jack breaking into one of his factories, even if the thing has been abandoned for decades. But they need more ammunition and Torbjörn was the designer for both their weapons of choice. And in any case, if they run into Torbjörn Ana imagines he’ll be more upset by the fact that both of them faked their deaths than by any petty theft. So she doesn’t feel too bad about it.

 

“We need to hurry,” Jack says in a low voice, as she searches through an enormous sorting bin. “There’s a Talon base nearby, and we left a car out front. They might see it.”

 

“Talon doesn’t know every random car we steal,” Ana says, irritated.

 

“No,” Jack says. “But he might. And this is Torbjörn’s place. He could connect the dots.”

 

A chill goes down Ana’s spine. “Help me look, then,” she says, and Jack hoists himself into the bin with her.

 

They find what they’re looking for– not enough, but they never have enough, anymore. They make their way through the wide open factory floor when suddenly, Ana stops them.

 

“What?” Jack asks. She shakes her head and holds a finger up to her lips. She can’t explain it really but it’s a feeling, there’s something wrong here. She doesn’t see anything though, doesn’t hear anything–

 

Then, it hits her. The smell. It smells like rotting flesh. He’s here.

 

Before she can say a word to Jack, Gabriel materializes on the catwalk above them. He fires his shotguns at them. He misses, but everything goes to shit anyway.

 

Sirens start blaring and the factory’s bathed in red light. A calm voice says something in Swedish, and walls of red lasers erupt from the walls. Gabriel goes into his wraith form and speeds through them. They seem to leave her and Jack unharmed, and they then disappear. The Swedish voice says something else, there are three chimes, and then the sirens and red lights turn off. The two of them stand and look around. Gabriel’s nowhere to be seen.

 

“We should go,” Jack says, and Ana vigorously nods.

 

They make their way as quickly and quietly as they can to the main door, but Gabriel’s waiting for them there. He doesn’t do anything though, doesn’t touch his shotguns, just watches them.

 

“Gabriel?” Ana says tentatively. Jack holds his arm in front of her, but drops it when she glares at him. She takes a step forward. “What’s going on?”

 

“It’s a biometric scanner,” he says. His mask is on but she can tell he’s looking past her. “It won’t recognize me, on account of me being dead.” Now, he shifts his slightly, and she can tell he’s glaring at Jack. “One of you two will have to unlock the door.”

 

“How do we know you won’t just kill us the second the door’s open?” Jack asks. His rifle is hefted but Gabriel just scoffs.

 

“You outnumber me. You’ll make do.”

 

He’s right. They certainly have before. Jack starts taking slow steps towards the chamber attached to the door, his rifle trained on Gabriel the whole time. Ana holds up her hand.

 

“Stop.” Jack and Gabriel both start, and look over at her. “You can’t get out any other way, can you, Gabriel?”

 

“I could figure something out,” he says after a pause. She snorts.

 

“So that’s a no. So we have you here, trapped, and we can set the conditions for your release. We have food, right?” Jack nods slowly. “So we can wait. And you need us alive to get out. Is that what you’re saying?”

 

“Any intel you get from me, I’ll be able to head Talon off about as soon as I leave,” Gabriel spits. His hands have curled into fists, the gleam of his claws just visible. “And I’m not giving up any of my people.” Ana stares at him as though he’s crazy.

 

“Gabriel. I’m not talking about Talon. I’m talking to you. I want to know what happened to you.”

 

His fists unfurl and he crumbles a little. Literally, bits of smoke drift off of him. “I need you alive to get out of here,” he says. “But I need you dead to eat. And if you wait too long, I can’t control the hunger.”

 

Then he becomes a wraith and flies away. Jack watches him go, then walks up to her.

 

“We have enough MREs to last a week,” he says in a low voice. “But…”

 

“I know.” She rubs her face. “Let’s find somewhere to camp.”

 

They post up on an elevated station on the other side of the building, so Gabriel can’t drag one of them into the scanning chamber while they sleep. Every time one of them turns on their bed roll, it sends an alarming creaking noise through the factory, but Ana’s looked at the attachments and deemed them serviceable. And she imagines they’d both be lying awake anyway.

 

She’s spent a lot of nights lying awake trying to think through what happened to Gabriel, but now she’s all the more anxious, when the answers are in the same building as her. Jack was with Gabriel for longer than she was, was with him until the end, but Jack told her he didn’t know. That he has no idea why Gabriel would think he did this to him. Ana believes him. She also believes Jack can be oblivious, sometimes by choice. Ana, though, Ana sees everything, whether she wants to or not. She wasn’t there when everything broke bad, but she’s here now. She trusts herself enough to find the truth in whatever Gabriel tells her. She can start to make things right. They’ve already made progress. Gabriel said he can’t control his hunger, sometimes. That’s information.

 

It just also scares the hell out of her.

 

“Jack?” she says. There’s a creak as he turns over.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Promise me you won’t hatefuck Gabriel.”

 

“ _Ana_ ,” Jack says, sounding completely exhausted.

 

“That’s not a promise.”

 

“I promise,” he says. “Now let me go to sleep.” She listens to the platform creak as he turns back over and closes her eye.

 

-

 

“So you can talk to me,” Gabriel says flatly. “But you can’t get me out of here.”

 

The holovid projection of Sombra rolls her eyes. He’s lying down next to the locked door. He doesn’t need to sleep, there’s no way either of them will be able to slip past him. But he had hoped he would have been able to skip out, himself.

 

“Mr. Ikea may not know shit about a secure coding network,” holovid Sombra says. “But goddamn, does he know his robotics. I’m pretty sure the only way to hack this is to take a wrecking ball to the damn thing.”

 

“That could be arranged.”

 

“Not without attracting a lot of attention and obliterating the nice little air of mystery you’ve built up around yourself, champ.” He rolls his eyes up to the ceiling. There are some high windows, and he can see small squares of stars. Sombra taps at her keyboard. “You’ve tried to activate the biometrics?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Then yeah, I don’t know what to tell you. Every inch of emergency protocol is predicated on containing any non-human actors. That man hates himself some Omnics.”

 

“I’m aware,” Gabriel says. “I worked with him for decades. He never shut up about it.”

 

“You know he’s taking care of a Bastion now?”

 

Gabriel rolls over to look at Sombra’s grinning image. “Seriously?”

 

“Yeah. And his daughter’s working with Lieutenant Wilhelm.”

 

“Which daughter?”

 

“Uh. Tall? Inexplicably redheaded? She’s trans, so maybe when you met her she was being treated like a boy?”

 

“Ooh, yeah. Brigitte.” Gabriel rubs his beard absently. “God, she’s got to be out of school now, you’re right.” The last time he saw her, she was making cardboard armor for her cat. She had been a good kid. He had hoped against hope that she would be able to overcome Reinhardt’s influence.

 

Some smoke drips off him, and Sombra notices. “How are you holding up?” she asks, all faux-casual.

 

“Fine,” he says, in the same tone. Really, it’s not anything out of the ordinary. He goes a time without eating, the rate of decay steadily increases, the rate of regeneration steadily decreases, the pain climbs exponentially. It’s a little disheartening not having any way of alleviating it. But it’s nothing new, and he’s gone longer without eating. Especially back in the early days, when fading away had seemed preferable to accepting his reality. Then, they had shocked him into his wraith form and forced him to feed. When he reformed, he had been humiliated. Now, it just hurts. It’s fine.

 

Sombra knows, though, because Sombra knows everything. She frowns. “You know, you only need one of them alive to get out of there,” she says. “If you get too hungry, you can eat.”

 

“I know,” he says. “But I think if I killed Jack, Ana might just have the both of us die here.”

 

Sombra does not comment on the fact that he hasn’t even entertained killing Ana as an option. Instead, she delicately posits, “you could probably force her to let you out.”

 

He could. Ana’s tough, but he still has that supersoldier strength, albeit a grim parody of it. He could pick her up, carry her to the door, no matter how hard she fought. Manhandle her into the scanner. Put her down when the door has opened and they’re back in the sunlight.

 

He shudders a little, and some more black vapor slides off him. Sombra, God bless her, does not comment on that either. “I’m not sure I could,” he says.

 

Sombra sighs but doesn’t argue. “I’ll keep trying to work on the decryptions,” she says. “But in the meantime, maybe you could work on them? Try just throwing them something, anything. They’re going to get real sick of this place real fast. They may have food, but I bet you could still wait them out to a point where they’re desperate.”

 

She’s right, again. They’re human, and humans have drives beside hungry. When he becomes a wraith, he opts out of being human. He doesn’t get bored or antsy or miss anyone or anything. He only has to deal with the hunger.

 

The problem is, he gets so hungry there, sometimes. And when that singular mindset overwhelms him, he knows Ana’s going to look like easier prey than Jack. Because Jack still has the SEP serum in him, functioning as intended. Jack never woke up one day to have his skin wisping away, like a mockery of the aging process, skipping right past gray hair and wrinkles and going straight to rotting flesh and decomposition. Ninety-six SEP participants died in the program, Phuc died in combat, Harriet spontaneously developed stage IV breast cancer at age 34 and died within the month, and Gabriel’s a walking corpse. And Ana’s getting old. Jack’s so much younger than he deserves to be but it doesn’t matter what any of them deserved.

 

“Gabe?” He hasn’t said anything in a while, and Sombra looks nervous. He smiles, but it doesn’t seem to relax her at all.

 

“You’re right,” he says. “I’ll try.”

 

“Good,” she says. She glances over her shoulder, to some room that’s not picked up by the projection’s scanner. “Anything else? Any more coworkers you want to gossip about? Or are we good?”

 

He narrows his eyes. “Are you at Widowmaker’s? I told you not to call me from there. I don’t want anyone else knowing about this.”

 

“She’s such a heavy sleeper!” Sombra protests. “Trust me. One time I figured out how to port Doom to her alarm clock and beat the game, all while she was in bed right next to me. And she didn’t stop snoring the whole time.”

 

Gabriel snorts. “Fine.”

 

“Alright.” She gives him a quick smile. “So we’re good?”

 

He’s suddenly struck by how big and empty the factory is. Across the complex, Ana and Jack are sleeping in the same place. Across the world, Sombra’s going to go to sleep next to Widowmaker. He’s here at the door alone and he can’t sleep anymore. He half wants to keep Sombra on the line, just to have her be there.

 

“We’re good,” he says instead. “Keep me updated.”

 

“Will do, boss.” She gives him a two finger salute and then her image disappears. Gabriel holds the blank holovid loosely to his chest and watches the empty factory.


	2. Chapter 2

If Torbjorn wouldn’t have wanted them breaking into his factory, he certainly wouldn’t have want Jack breaking into his office. But it’s their third day in the factory, and Jack no longer really cares. He and Ana have exhausted every possible topic of conversation, bar the difficult ones. His nerves are frayed from the constant possibility of Gabe ambushing them, a stress that only grows as more time passed without seeing so much as a trace of Gabe. He had placed Torbjorn’s office in a “break in case of emergency” box, to be saved only for a situation where his boredom had turned to desperation. And so on the third day, he shoots off the lock and steps in.

 

He had tried to temper his expectations, but inevitably he’s disappointed. The office is almost completely bare, just a couple legal documents on his desk. There are drawers, though, and they feel all the world like lottery scratchers right now. He starts opening them. They’re mostly just as empty as the surface of the deck. In one of them, there are some paper clips and ballpoint pens, in another there’s a cheap stress ball that Jack takes purely for the irony of it all. In the large bottom drawer though, he hits the jackpot. There’s a miniature filing system. Jack rifles through the folders and finds some old job applications, some vaguely recognizable blueprints, and a folder filled with construction paper and crayon scribbles. He takes it out.

 

“Really, Jack?”

 

He bolts upright, almost hitting his head on the desk. He grabs his rifle off his back and trains it in the direction of the voice. But Gabe doesn’t do anything, just stands in the doorway watching him.

 

His mask is off. Jack almost drops the rifle in shock, and then he wonders if that’s what Gabe was going for. Ana had told him what she saw, but seeing it in person is still horrifying. Gabe’s eyes glow red, chunks of flesh have sloughed off his face, leaving grayish valleys. Bone is visible in places, harsh spots of white. He wouldn’t bet on his ability to read Gabe, anymore, but if he had to guess he’d say his expression is neutral.

 

“What do you want?” Jack asks. He doesn’t move his rifle. Gabe just shrugs.

 

“Bored,” he says. “But not bored enough to go snooping through Torbjorn’s shit.” He walks over to the desk and sits down on the office chair. The rifle almost bumps into his chest and he doesn’t blink. “Still. You find anything good?”

 

Jack stares down at Gabe. Gabe calmly watches him with his red eyes. Jack hefts himself onto the desk and hands Gabe the folder of drawings.

 

“I don’t blame him for leaving them,” he says, as Gabe flips through it. “They’re pretty bad.”

 

“They’re kids, Jack.” Jack feels a wave of annoyance because he fucking knows, he isn’t that bad with children. It was a joke. Maybe.

 

“Do you think any of them are by Brigitte?” Gabe asks, before he can say anything. Jack blinks.

 

“Uh. Probably not. She’s his youngest, right? And he left these factories pretty early on. It’s probably his oldest, if anyone.”

 

“You’re right,” Gabe says absently. “What was her name again?”

 

“Sonya, I think?”

 

“Right. Sonya.” Gabe closes the folder and places it on the desk. “Did you know Brigitte’s running around with Reinhardt?”

 

Jack stares at him. “What are we doing here, Gabe?”

 

“I’m bored.”

 

“You tried to kill me the last time you saw me. And you expect me to believe you’re down for small talk just because you’re bored?”

 

“Well,” Gabe says. “You tried to kill me too, and you’re sitting here, talking to me. I’d think you’d understand.”

 

Jack debates arguing with Gabe about whether or not he’s ever really tried to kill him, but that seems pointless, especially since he’s right. He slouches down and Gabe smiles.

 

“Why don’t you go talk to Ana?” he asks, in a feeble attempt at a fight. It still seems to darken Gabe’s mood, and he looks away from him.

 

“I don’t think she’s interested in small talk.”

 

That’s fair. Ana never had much tolerance for wasting time. Jack, though, was a bureaucrat for decades. “She told me we aren’t allowed to hatefuck,” he says. Gabe laughs so hard he nearly falls out of his chair. Jack scowls. “It’s not that funny.”

 

“Yes it is,” Gabe whispers, still giggling.

 

“I mean, we could. If we wanted to. But we don’t.”

 

“Sure we could,” Gabe says, in an exaggeratedly placating voice.

 

“Does your dick even still work, Gabe?”

 

“Does yours, old man?” Jack laughs, and Gabe gives him a surprised little smile. Jack’s suddenly transported back to some teasing flirtation he’d started with the cutest guy in the most hellish military program.

 

“What are we doing here, Gabe?” he asks again. He feels so tired.

 

Gabe sighs. “I don’t know,” he says. “This is all bullshit. I guess I don’t really care what kind of bullshit it is.”

 

Jack nods numbly. “Me either,” he says. He kicks his leg out and hooks it into the chair’s armrest and pulls Gabe closer. Gabe’s red eyes widen and he looks at him for a moment. Then he leans up and kisses him.

 

He wishes he could say the first thing he noticed about the kiss was the familiarity of it all, but it isn’t. Instead, he notices how Gabe’s room temperature now, and how his mouth is completely dry. Saying that his lips are chapped feels a bit redundant, seeing as all of Gabe is dead now, not just the skin on his lips. It’s far from the best kiss he’s ever had. But it’s still so familiar. Jack wishes he could say the former outweighed the latter. But he’s sad and he’s lonely and it doesn’t. He keeps kissing Gabe, lets him deepen the kiss, slip his tongue into his mouth. Jack isn’t even the one who stops it. Gabe stops it right after he puts his hand on Jack’s cheek. Then Jack feels him, really feels him, the cold, dehydrated feel of his skin, and he’s reminded of every dead body he ever carried or tripped over or fell on him or left behind. He flinches, Gabe takes his hand away, and Gabe breaks the kiss.

 

“Fuck you, Jack.”

 

He’s glaring at him. Any of the rapport he had managed to claw back is gone in a flash. Jack drops his head in his hands.

 

“What, do you not like me like this?” Gabe snarls. “Is it unpleasant for you? Remembering what you did to me?”

 

“Gabe, come on.”

 

“Poor Jack. Better go cry to Ana about it. God knows she’s fucking used to it.”

 

“Gabe.”

 

“I probably would have faked my death sooner, if you had been using me as your fucking therapist-slash-common sense filter.”

 

“Stop, Gabe,” he says. They’re coming back to years-old territory that’s still far too raw. Gabe’s still glaring at him, though. He leans in a bit, and Jack leans back in response.

 

“She did all that shit for you,” Gabe says venomously. “And you wouldn’t do shit for her. You left her behind.”

 

Jack buries his head in his hands. He feels the weight of Gabe’s stare and it’s completely trapping him. They got stuck here years ago, the day after Ana’s funeral when he had gone to Gabe, thinking his distance at the funeral had been because of grief. They’re still stuck here now. He’s tried and he’s tried but he doesn’t think Gabe will ever understand that the thought of telling Ana people died so she could live was worse than never speaking to her again.

 

“You don’t know what I’d do to speak to her again,” Gabe had said to him in one of those dead end conversations. “I’d have done anything for her.”

 

He had gone home after that and sat on his bed and thought about how there were things he never would have done for Ana, and how he knew that was right, knew because he had watched Ana for years and she had shaped the person he had become. But Gabe loved her so much, loved her even when she was going, even when she was gone. Gabe had loved him like that, and it had been something awesome, having someone who chose to you unconditionally. Gabe’s love had made him the person he had become. He didn’t know how to reconcile the two.

 

And so they were stuck. His eyes are shut but he hasn’t heard Gabe move. “I didn’t want to do it,” Jack says to the floor. “I almost couldn’t. But I had to.”

 

He didn’t expect it to get through, but he’s still hurt when Gabe just laughs at him. “Bullshit,” Gabe says. “You never met a difficult goddamn decision you couldn’t delegate.”

 

That pisses him off. He drops his hands and glares right back at Gabe. “I didn’t want to,” he repeats. “But I had to. I had to, Gabe, I made the decision you couldn’t. You need to fucking understand that.”

 

Gabe sits back and watches him for a moment. When he speaks, his voice is icy. “Did you come back for me?”

 

“Gabe,” Jack says weakly.

 

“Look me in the eye and tell me that when you got up from the Swiss Base explosion you went looking for me.”

 

He can’t, is the thing, because he didn’t. When he woke up after the explosion, his ears were ringing and the world was just different textures of white. When he found his bearings, he could hear voices in the distances. He didn’t want people to find him. And he didn’t want to find Gabe dead, and he certainly didn’t want to find Gabe alive. So he ran, without looking back.

 

He’s silent and Gabe stands up. “That’s what I fucking thought,” he says. “You didn’t want to see shit. You never have. Well, now I’m gone, and Ana’s too fucking old to protect you anymore. So tough shit.”

 

He leaves Jack there, in the ancient office. Jack takes his stress ball and leaves as well.

 

“We need to go,” he says to Ana, when he gets back to their camp. “We need to talk.”


	3. Chapter 3

When they reach the door, Gabriel’s waiting for them, again. His arms are folded and he doesn’t move or say anything as they approach. At Ana’s request, Jack isn’t wielding his rifle. Jack stops a few yards away but Ana keeps walking, until she’s within what she feels is standard speaking distance. It’s hard to tell, because the smell makes her want to stand further from him.

 

“Are we done here?” Gabriel asks.

 

“No,” Ana says. “We still haven’t talked.”  


“Him and I talked plenty,” Gabriel says. He nods at Jack, who doesn’t move. Ana grits her teeth.

 

“You and I haven’t, though. And I’m not leaving here until you talk to me. And I’m tired, Gabriel. So can we please get this over with.”

 

Gabriel tilts his head back down and stares at her for a moment. Then he says in a completely exhausted voice, “What do you want me to say, Ana.”

 

“Anything, okay? Just give me something here, Gabriel. I want to understand. You don’t know how badly I want to understand. Do you not want that?”

 

He unfolds his arms and sighs. Bits of black smoke drip out the sides of his mask. “I tried, Ana. I did. Back when Overwatch was still together. I tried to explain myself to you, over and over again. But you never listened to me. You always took his side.”

 

“This is about work? You did all this because I disagreed with you on how Overwatch should operate?”

 

“No, Ana–” He takes off his mask and rubs his face. He looks even worse than what she saw in Giza. “You were so angry about O’Deorain. But I needed her. I was dying, Ana.” His voice is small now, she almost needs to lean in to hear him. “And she was the only one who could help. I thought I could get it done without you finding out, and when you did, you were so angry–”

 

“What about Dr. Ziegler?” she interrupts. Gabriel’s red eyes flash and his face twists into a snarl. She unconsciously takes a step back.

 

“I knew she wouldn’t do what needed to be done,” he says. “She would let me die, rather than compromise. And when I did die, he–” He points at Jack, “sent her to do his dirty work. And she left me like this.”

 

Jack starts to protest but Ana knows that’s a dead end path, so she cuts him off. “How do you know that?” she asks.

 

“Because– I know, Ana.” He waves one of his arms and his talons flash in the evening sun, trickling in from the high windows. “You weren’t there, at the end. But I was. He’s changed. You shouldn’t trust him. I don’t know why you trust him. He left you behind.”

 

“I’m glad he did,” she says. He stills.

 

“What?”

 

“I’m glad,” she repeats. “He would have risked the hostages and what was left of our team if he had gone after me. I don’t know if I could have lived with myself if they had died. He made the decision I would have wanted him to make.” Behind her, Jack lets out a long sigh, and Gabriel glares at him before turning back to her.

 

“But he could have saved you all,” he says. “And he didn’t even try. He– he left you, Ana.” He rubs his face again. A bit of skin falls off, and dissipates before it hits the floor. “There wasn’t even a body at your funeral. When I thought you were gone, I was– I was lost.”

 

There’s a lump in her throat now. “Don’t,” she says softly.

 

“I didn’t know how to keep going,” Gabriel says, ignoring her. “And he just kept making excuses for himself. I couldn’t trust him anymore, Ana. You should never have trusted him. You almost died because you did. I wanted to get you justice. And he killed me for it. Now I’m trying to get it for both of us.”

 

She wants to know more, wants to know everything, it’s the only way they can even start to fix this mess. But it’s suddenly too much. “Oh, fuck you, Gabriel. Fuck you and your shitty little victim complex.” Gabriel flinches but doesn’t say anything, just stares at her. “You didn’t want me to leave? Then maybe you could have been a fucking pal, instead of being a prick to me whenever I tried to do my job. I had you bitching to me about Jack and Jack bitching to me about you, and neither of you gave a shit about how I was doing. And do you know how I was doing, Gabriel?”

 

Her voice is getting high and loud and she hates it, hates losing control, she always prided herself on speaking softly and carrying a big stick but she can’t help herself. “I was dying, Gabriel. You were dying? Well so fucking was I. My daughter left me, I couldn’t sleep at night without drinking, and I couldn’t see a way for it to get better. Did you know that, Gabriel?” He gives a minute shake of his head. “Every mission, I would picture some way where my death would end up saving the team. I told myself it was my way of coping with the fear of death, but that wasn’t it, was it? Because when I woke up in that hospital, I felt disappointed. Did you know that, Gabriel? Did you ever bother to ask?”

 

Gabriel shakes his head again. Behind her, Jack says, “Ana–”

 

“You didn’t, because I dealt with my shit,” she continues, ignoring him. “I’m a grown ass woman and even though it would have been real fucking nice for you to have asked me how I was doing literally ever, I’m the only one responsible for what I did. And so I don’t blame you, or you,” she says, wheeling to face Jack, who is hunched in on himself. “I made my own goddamn mistake and I own that. Because I’m never going to move on if I put it in the hands of you two. I learned my fucking lesson. But you, you stand here and tell me you’re killing Overwatch agents, my agents, for me? Fuck off, Gabriel. Fuck you.”

 

“He did this to me,” Gabriel says in a tiny voice. “He killed me.” It should make her angry but right now, talons and shotguns and all, he’s just pathetic. She rolls her eyes.

 

“Well, you’re still here. So you can stay here forever or you can move the fuck on.” Ana pushes past him. She steps into the scanning chamber. For a second, she’s enveloped in a matrix of red lasers, then there’s a pleasant ding and the giant steel door is grinding open. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Jack pull his rifle from his back. But Gabriel doesn’t make a move for them. He falls into smoke and the three of them leave together. Then Jack and Ana get into the car they’d stolen to get here, and Gabriel goes off to wherever the hell he came from.

 

Ana leans her head back against the headrest. The inside is dusty and sticky hot from being left in the sun. Jack climbs into the driver’s seat and starts the engine. Ana watches Gabriel’s disappearing black smoke trail. Her bile is still heavy in her mouth. She loves Gabriel. She’ll always love Gabriel. This drove her further from him, and that’s not what she wants. But there wasn’t a word she said that wasn’t true, and she wants to own her shit. And anyway, the three of them always seem to find each other again, no matter how far they run.

 

“I’m sorry, Ana,” Jack says. His voice is hoarse and when she looks over at him, his face is red and blotchy and there are established tear tracks on his cheeks. Her eye is welling up and she closes it.

 

“It’s not your fault,” she says. “We’re out now. Let’s go.” She hears rubble shifting under the car’s propulsors and feels the car begin to move. She lets Jack stay behind the wheel and lets the gentle motion of the drive lull her to sleep.

 

-

 

When he’s a wraith, he can opt out of everything but the hunger. And he thought he might be able to make it back to base in his wraith form, but he’s just so hungry. About half a mile out, he resolidifies on a cracked road that never got repaired after the war. He sits down and pulls out his holovid and calls Sombra. It goes straight to voicemail. “I’m out,” he texts her, feeling all the world like he did as a child, calling his parents to be picked up from a sleepover. “Can you send a transport to my location?”

 

He doesn’t know what she’s doing, but she must have it coded that his messages override any of her silencing protocols. Because within the minute, she texts back, “omw”. Twenty minutes later, the air around him picks up, and a small ship flickers into view. It lands and Sombra opens the door.

 

“So,” she says. “How was your summer vacation?”

 

Gabriel pushes past her and she gives a weary little chuckle and makes her way back to the cockpit. Gabriel sits down in the copilot’s seat as she straps in.

 

“How’d you end up getting out?” she asks. Gabriel stares through the window, watching the ruined asphalt and dead grass disappear from view as they lift up.

 

“You were right,” he says. “They got tired.”

 

She doesn’t ask him to elaborate. Probably doesn’t need to. Sombra knows everything. After Giza, she had handed him her full casefile on the Shrike, and Gabriel had been able to read through Ana’s entire journey after her “death.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked her. She had shrugged.

 

“Didn’t know if you wanted to know,” she had said. Then she had hesitated and added, “And I mean. You work with Widow, so…”

 

She knew everything, and she knew he should have hated Widowmaker for this. But he didn’t, because Ana had chosen her side and he had to cling to the few people left on his. Sombra couldn’t have predicted him being this desperate. And also, she always seemed to get a little dumb when Widowmaker entered the picture.

 

Sombra’s quiet now, concentrating on piloting the ship. He takes off his mask and watches her out of the corner of his eye. She’s lied to him fairly consistently ever since he’s met her. And yet he trusts her more than he does anyone else. Because she’s by far the most dedicated to her own survival of anyone he’s ever met. She’s not going to die before him. The relief he feels at that fact overwhelms any guilt he feels about his selfishness. It feels like the only thing he can count on anymore. Sombra’s betrayed him before and she’s almost certainly going to betray him again. She may leave Talon at some point and may take Widowmaker with her. But he likes her, thinks she likes him too, and she makes him laugh. And he’s not going to go to her funeral. That’s enough.

 

He leans up against her shoulder. She stiffens a little in surprise but doesn’t say anything.

 

“Thank you,” he says quietly.

 

“Anytime,” Sombra says. They don’t speak much after that, they just watch the horizon and the Talon base growing ever closer.

 

-

 

After they ditch the car and settle back in a safe house, Jack tries to talk to her some more. As soon as he shuts the door behind them, he says, “Ana.”

 

“It’s fine,” she says.

 

“No, it’s not.” He takes a step towards her and she turns to him. She looks so tired. “You were right Ana, I let you down so badly, when you needed me to be there for you. I was so selfish. I knew as soon as you turned off your comms, but I didn’t want to–” He’s getting choked up again and he takes a deep breath. “I didn’t want to admit it was my fault. I’m so sorry.”

 

Ana walks up to him and hugs him. He can’t bring himself to hug her back so he just stands there, arms at his sides. “Thank you, Jack,” she says into his chest. “But it’s not your fault. I meant what I said. I want to take responsibility for what I did.”

 

He blinks rapidly, trying to force back tears. “But I should have–”

 

“Maybe you should have,” she says. “But you didn’t. But you’re here now. And I’m glad you are. I don’t know where I’d be without you.”

 

He deflates and wraps his arms around her. She squeezes him gently. “I don’t know where I’d be without you either,” he murmurs. “I love you.”

 

“I love you too.” She pulls back and looks over his shoulder, at the door. “I don’t know about you, but I could kill for some real food. You mind if I head out to get something?” He shakes his head, wiping at his eyes. She smiles and he watches her go, then heads to his room.

 

When he’s getting settled, he finds it. It’s in the pocket of his jacket. He doesn’t remember putting it there, but he must have. He unfolds the construction paper and lays it flat on his mattress.

 

It’s six stick figures. One of them’s big and one of them’s small, two of them are shaded a bit darker than the others. One of the shaded ones has a goatee and is holding hands with a stick figure with a scribble of yellow on top of his head, who’s holding hands with the other shaded one, who has long black hair and a dash under her eye. They’re all smiling.

 

Jack’s crying for the third time today and it’s absurd. He’s crying over a kid’s shitty drawing. Ana has that goddamn picture of the three of them framed, and he doesn’t cry about that. Maybe it’s because he’s inured to it. But there’s a sick feeling in his stomach that he’s crying because in this picture, they’re all smiling.

 

He folds the picture back up and sticks it in his bag. He stands and heads out the door. Ana will be coming back from the market soon. She’ll probably have a lot of bags, and he should help her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to clarify, since it could be unclear– I hc Ana as aroace, and her relationship with Gabe & Jack is that of life partners (ex, in Gabe's case). Gabe & Sombra are super platonic as well. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading– I've gotten some really sweet comments on this and I absolutely treasure them <3

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @tacticalgrandma on tumblr if you want to talk to me there!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and any comments/kudos would mean the world to me <3


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